


Drawlight in Venice

by AlexSimon



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:35:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4792928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexSimon/pseuds/AlexSimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My own meager account of Drawlight's time in Venice</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> I am not a historian and have only the damned vaguest ideas of how a person would get from London to Venice in the early 1800's. My apologies. I made a wild guess and if it's wrong, let me know so I can amend the story

Christopher Drawlight's companion on the way to Venice was a young woman named Felicity that he met as they waited together for the boat in the January chill. 

He and Felicity took to each other straight away. They were each as alone as the other and passed the days in transit talking about their lives and playing cards together and creating what gossip they could from the dull, cold days. People thought them to be brother and sister, such was the similarity in their complexions and their sizes and the color of their hair and eyes, so by the end of the first day they played along and introduced themselves as such and built a whole game of their supposed relation. 

"Brother of mine!" she would called to him and "Sister dear." he would say to her. She wasn't sure why they both used her last name for the game, but they did. 

For the span of a few days, they shared all, even Mr Drawlight's small bed in steerage class for warmth, lying head to toe until they heard snores from around the room and then moving so they could whisper together until one or both was sleepy.

Felicity was a young woman, in the family way but still a few weeks from showing. Her father was on honest man, a widower, and she had broken his heart with her wantonness, so she was running away to find to her lover or a new life, whichever she ran into first. 

"And you, Christopher?" she asked as they whispered in the dark on the last evening of the trip.

"On the run from debts, of course," answered Mr Drawlight. "I've told you as much."

"Brother of mine. that isn't all." 

"No," he said. His eyes were on a stain on the bottom of the mattress above them. "It is not. But it's certainly enough. I've done lots of things I shouldn't and that was the only one to land me in jail."

"You won't tell me more? Is it love?" 

"No, not that," he said. "That would be an easy problem to solve."

"For you!" said Felicity, patting her stomach. 

"I have lost my friends though," said Christopher Drawlight. "All of them. And they won't be regained." 

Felicity patted his dark hair then and fell asleep and so Christopher Drawlight turned his head to the foot of the bed did the same. 

Upon their arrival in Venice, Felicity sought to stay together for some time more, but her new friend assured her that this would not be safe for her. 

"I don't believe a word of it, Christopher." she said. "I would have been quite lonely on the boat without you and quite vulnerable. Let me travel with my brother a bit longer. Nothing could be safer for me." 

"But you must believe me. I am not even sure..." But he would not finish his sentence, or could not, because the thought that his very days may be allocated out in small number drifted from his head almost as if he had never begun it. 

In the end, he bought her a meal with some of the money Henry had given him as he could not leave a pregnant girl with no food in her stomach and they ate together, picking out food my pointing at words on a menu in a language neither of them could read and hoping for the best. They left the café and walked out into the street. He recommended as they walked that she leave Venice but she would not, so he helped her find a room and said goodbye. 

"Christopher," Felicity said. She grabbed at his grubby coat. "I'm scared now. I feel I've made a mistake." 

"They are unavoidable, on the whole. At least that's what I've found." 

She swatted at him playfully but her dark eyes, so much like his own, were frightened. The city was dark and full of foreign chatter and she was young. They were both extremely dirty and it was getting colder by the moment but at least, thanks to Henry Lascelles and his money, they were not hungry. If things were different, he thought, he would be her brother until she found her lover or was settled or on her way back home, but things were not different. They were as they were and he was here on someone else's very urgent business and as soon as it was light, his work would begin. 

It he had been more observant, Mr Drawlight would have been more nervous, because he would have noticed that the shadows seemed to reach for him as he walked and that in the midst of all the Italian noises bouncing around, there was a ghostly whisper that was the sound of his own name always a few steps behind him. But he did not notice these things and Christopher Drawlight departed from his new friend to find his own place to sleep with his head full of plans for the morning. . 

He was sure that he left her thinking that his return was imminent, or at least inevitable. But it was the last time the girl named Felicity was to see her friend.


	2. The Miss Underhills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this with next to no knowledge of the 19th century or Venice. Doing my best! I hope to get some to research a bit.

The Miss Underhills were the first people to truly welcome Christopher Drawlight when he came to visit them. 

The previous few days had been a series of rather uncomfortable visits with people who did not want him in their homes but accepted him because they had received word from Henry Lascelles that Drawlight was on his business. It had taken all Drawlight's composure to sit with those people and pretend he did not see the looks on their faces when he touched their furniture or hear how they spoke to him. He was reminded painfully that not so very long ago the world had been a much brighter place filled with much nicer people, but he tried not dwell on it much, even if did become, especially of an evening when he finally crawled into his chilly bed. The Miss Underhills though could not be happier at his arrival to their home and this was a relief. He was rushed into their parlor and the women themselves flounced in as if they had been waiting all morning for his arrival. 

They were twins, much taller than Mr Drawlight, very thin, and dressed more like young girls in frills and ribbons than like mature women whose faces had begun to wrinkle slightly. They chief way to tell them apart was that from a young age, their parents had taken dressing one of the twins in one color and choosing another for her sister and it was a habit they had carried into adulthood. On the day Mr Drawlight visited, Miss Priscilla Underhill was in light yellow dress the color of a sweating stick of butter and her sister Marian was purple, though Drawlight would not remember this distinction or even their Christian names. Their hair, a not unpleasing gentle shade of brown, had been wrangled into very harsh curls and twisted in identically intricate ways upon their heads.  
Another way in which they were similar is that they were both in love with Henry Lascelles, a friend of their brother's, which was why they were so happy to accept his raggedy little friend. They were also in the care of an aged great uncle, very old and pious who did not often let them out and were starved for company. Christopher Drawlight was a very welcome guest indeed. 

"Mr Drawlight," said the purple clad Miss Underhill once they were all seated and supplied with tea. "I hope you are well." 

"Yes," chimed the yellow one. "Quite well." 

"I am quite well now that I am with you" said Mr Drawlight. 

"And how is England?" 

"How is Mr Lascelles?" 

Both Miss Uunderhills were leaning forward in their chairs. The purple one who asked about Mr Lascelles, was receiving a glare from her sister that her sister that was being ignored. Mr Drawlight thought that they might fully disappear into the puffy cushions and folds of their dresses. 

"I will happily answer all of your questions, dear ladies. However, I must be brief. Our business, as you know is urgent."

The Miss Underhills nodded gravely. 

"There is reason to believe that both England and Mr Lascelles are in danger." 

The Miss Underhills gasped in harmony. 

"It is true. There is man with the power to bring great harm to us all."

"I know who you mean," said the yellow Miss Underhill in an affected whisper. 

"Quite," said the purple one with wide eyes. “Our letters from our friends have mentioned. Uncle’s friends talk of little else.”

Drawlight nodded. 

"Yes," he said. "Mr Strange is very powerful and by all accounts, deranged. It is an unfortunate combination. No one knows what he may do next, or what he is capable of." 

"Oh yes," said the purple Miss Underhill. "We have heard the stories."

"We have heard stories that keep us awake at night," said the yellow one. "Are they true?"

Christopher Drawlight shrugged. 

"If even half are, we have no choice but to fear. My dear ladies, I think it most urgent that we share all of the information we have with each other."

They nodded together and extended an invitation to a private dinner at their home the next evening. 

Before he left, Mr Drawlight was bid farewell by the two Miss Underhills, each of whom slipped to him a love note to deliver to Henry Lascelles and made him promise not to tell her sister.


	3. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drawlight meets Dr Greysteel.

When he woke, Drawlight was cold. 

He had taken a room in what was obviously one of the poorer parts of town, though he didn't know enough about the city to be sure how much so. He had a floppy bed on a frame that had begun to rust. The blanket over him was thin and the morning light that floated through the one window was dim and wispy, like it wasn't trying very hard to be morning yet at all. 

Drawlight's eyes played tricks on him in the strange light as they opened and he imagined briefly that the city had sunk underwater while he was asleep. 

Drawight shivered upon sitting up, but he was used to the sensation of an unheated room and cold floor at his feet. His last accommodations in England had been meager, and prison had been in no way an improvement. He thought for a second of the girl that he had for a few days called his sister. The trip over had been warm because of her and he hoped she was well and secondly that she soon forgot about him. 

It was not easy to make himself presentable, but he tried his best by affecting the appearance of his former life with improvisations and washing away the boat journey. Neither was easy on the small amount of money he had. He spent the morning brushing and shining and scrubbing. 

The accommodations he made for his lost finery were ribbons and trinkets that had caught his over the last several days as he had done his work around Venice. A spoon was affixed where his most prized possession, a lorgnette, had once hung. His gloves he attended to with chalk until they were white again and, first the left hand and then the right much less steadily. As he slaved in front of the mirror, Drawlight also began thinking of lies because that was in part what he was here to do. He knew roughly what the rumors surrounding Jonathan Strange were by now and he began there. 

It took a long time and much effort, but by 9:00 AM, Drawlight finally felt he could again show his face in Venice. When he looked in the mirror very quickly, he saw briefly the person he had been only a few years ago. The clothes he wore were faded and far from fashionable and he had dark circles under his eyes, but for a second, only one, the Christopher Drawlight he liked so very much to remember looked back at him. His skin was very but had not aged poorly during his troubles and his hair had remained dark, which he thrilled to see. It was a small comfort but Drawlight would take any comfort at all. It was only on closer inspection, he thought with a turn of his head, that the difference was pronounced. He contented himself by thinking that perhaps if he walked very quickly and let no one who didn't have to look at him for long that he might not be much noticed. 

His first task was to find the address where the doctor was staying. 

When Drawlight found the place, he waited shivering in a doorway across the street until the man he was waiting for emerged, tall, sliver haired and dressed soberly but with care. Drawlight jumped away from the door to meet him before he was gone, not noticing that his chalked gloves had left a perfect handprint at the place where he had been leaning and that more dust from them had gotten into his prized dark hair, 

He stumbled into a puddle along the away and half hobbled to the doctor shaking water from his foot. The doctor stared at him as he approached in a way that Drawlight knew was condescending, but it did not matter now, or did not matter much at least. 

"You are Dr. Greyfield?" he asked. He could not help but regard the man's clothes with a bit of envy as he waited for him to speak, which he did not. Drawlight realized that the doctor was studying him too. The man had a stern but not unkind face now turned to Drawlight with a look of the most superior surprise that he was being spoken to. 

"You are Dr. Greyfield? The friend of the magician?" Drawlight asked again, squinting his eyes at the morning sun, now quite bright, behind the man's head. He wanted to pat down his hair to make himself neater, but remembered his gloves at the last moment. He thought for a second as he tried to find a place for his hands that would not touch his trousers that the wind had not abated all morning and indeed almost seemed to be pulling at his hair and clothes, almost like the wind had been able to form itself a tiny grip to yank him around with. 

"Yes," said the other man finally. His eyes had fixated on Drawlight's decorative spoon and he seemed to be trying to put it to memory as he spoke. "But my name is Greysteel. Not Greyfield."

Drawlight mentally cursed Norrell and Lascelles. who could send him all the way here with so many threats and promises of ill that would come to him if he failed and not even bother to get right the man's name that it was so important he should solicit for information. Drawlight turned his mouth into the warmest smile he could and focused it onto Dr Greysteel. who did not return one of his own. 

"A thousand apologies, my dear Doctor!" he said, trying not speak through gritted teeth. "Some stupid person has misinformed me of your name. I am quite mortified. You are, I assure you, the last person in the world to whom I should wish to give offense. My respect for the medical profession is boundless. And now you stand there in the dignity of poultices and pulse taking and you say to yourself, 'Who is this odd creature who dares to address me in the street as if I were a common person?' Permit me to introduce myself." 

He did not know if Dr Greysteel noticed how he slid though a pause where he immediately decided that actually giving his name at this time was not prudent. 

"I come from London," he said instead. "From Mr. Strange's friends who, when they learned how far his wits had become deranged were thrown into such fits of anxiety that they took the liberty of dispatching me to come and find out how he is."  
Dr. Greysteel's annoyance at this was instant and noticeable. Inside his gloves, Drawlight's hands began to sweat, mixing with the chalk that had gotten onto his palms to from an uncomfortable paste, 

"Hmm!" said Dr. Greysteel. "Frankly, I could have wished them more anxious. I first wrote to them at the beginning of December- six weeks ago, sir! Six weeks ago!" 

"Oh quite!" answered Drawlight. "Very shocking, is it not? They are the idlest creatures in the world. They think of nothing but their own convenience! While you remain here in Venice- the magician's one true friend!"  
He stopped. He wondered how current the information he had been given was. The doctor looked most distressed to be standing on the street and discussing Jonathan Strange. 

"That is correct, is it not?" Drawlight continued, trying to cover his nervousness. "He has no friends but you?"

"Well, there is Lord Byron..." said Dr. Greysteel. 

" Byron!" Drawlight could not help but be a bit louder than he had intended and a few people stopped to look. Dr Greysteel fidgeted as they did. "Really? Dear me! Mad and a friend of Lord Byron." 

The Doctor appeared to be searching with little glances around for a way out of the conversation, which could not happen yet, so Drawligt took a step forward. 

"Oh, my dear Dr Greysteel. I have a thousand questions to ask you. Is there some place we could talk privately?"

Drawlight saw Dr Greysteel's eyes dart back toward the door to his house and then back to him. He frowned with no concern as to Drawlight knowing his current level of discomfort with him. When Dr. Greysteel spoke, he muttered excuses and mentioned a coffee house. Drawlight knew it was unlikely to do any good as far at the doctor's impression of him, but he smiled again and thanked him profusely, As Dr Greysteel turned to walk towards it, his long legs carrying him yards in front of the smaller man darting to catch up on broken shoes, Drawlight sighed in relief.


	4. Coffee with Dr Greysteel

Dr Greysteel soon took pity and slowed his place, allowing Drawlight to catch up. Drawlight thanked him several times and made a comment on the beauty of the morning and of the city, but Dr Greysteel only responded with terse nods, so Drawlight ceased talking. They did not speak any more as they continued their walk to the coffee house, but Drawlight would occasionally offer the doctor a smile if he happened to look back, also not returned. 

On their walk, Drawlight tripped, out of nowhere it seemed, on a silly wave that jumped from the canal and right at his foot. He could have sworn for a second that the wave had been behind him for several paces and that what's more, it tugged at his too large shoe, and the strangest of all that this little wave had a voice and the voice was issuing some threat against him. 

But he shook it off, the feeling and the wave, and he cursed a bit. When he looked up, Dr Greysteel was staring at him and seemed somewhere between confusion and fright, but he said nothing. By time he had walked a few steps, Drawlight had forgotten the incident entirely. 

They soon arrived at the destination. It was just the sort of place Drawlight had not had a chance to enter since coming to the city, respectable and clean and filed with respectable and clean people, the sort of place normally now quite closed to him. Inside the air was warm and Christopher Drawlight didn't realize until he'd stopped shivering after a few seconds in the shop how cold he had been. He followed the doctor to a table and drinks were soon ordered and brought for them. Drawlight began to drink the coffee as soon as it arrived, even before Dr Greysteel had begun speaking. 

"I ought to warn you," Dr Greysteel said. "That there are all sorts of rumors circulating the town concerning Mr Strange. People say he has summoned witches and made a servant for himself out of fire. You will know not to be taken in by such nonsense, but it is as well to be prepared. You will find him sadly changed." 

Drawlight watched as Dr Greysteel's face fell into very downcast look. The doctor stared down into his own coffee and his shoulders dropped in his fine coat. 

"All his excellent qualities,” he mumbled. “All his merits are just what they always were."

"Indeed?" asked Drawlight. He was feeling quite invigorated by the warm air in the coffee shop and the effects of a hot, sweet drink hitting his stomach, "But tell me, is it true that he has eaten his shoes? Is it true that he has turned several people into glass and thrown stones at them?"

"Eaten his shoes? Who told you that?" 

"Oh! Several people- Mrs Kendall-Blair, Lord Pope, Sir Galahad Denehey, the Miss Underhills..."

Across from Drawlight, Dr Greysteel was staring in disbelief. 

"But did you not hear what I just said? This is exactly the sort of foolish nonsense I am talking about."

Drawlight did what he always did in such situations; he continued on a course of pleasantness by laughing. He noticed that this only annoyed Dr Greysteel further, but he carried on. He had to.

"Patience, patience my dear doctor," he said. He almost tittered from nervousness and exhaustion and the magnitude of the task he had been given. "My brain is not so quick as yours. While you have been sharpening yours up with anatomy and chemistry, mine has languished into idleness." 

Drawlight felt a pain coming on his head, but he continued to talk, saying whatever came into his mind to keep the doctor in his seat. As he went on. talking about his defects as a student, he noticed that Dr Greysteel had stopped paying attention. His annoyance was clear and he would soon end this meeting, Drawlight was sure. Drawlight's heart began to beat faster. He knew it was time to move forward. He was supposed to find out as much as he could about the young woman whose name had been appearing in Strange's letters. 

"You have a daughter, do you not?" he asked. Finally, Dr Greysteel looked back at him. 

"Yes, I have, but...."

"And they say you have sent her out of the city?"

Dr Greysteel seemed on the verge of having all the color drain from his face at this remark, but changed his mind and instead developed two red spots in cheeks as his eyes lit up with anger. Drawlight thought Dr Greysteel's eyebrows were most animated as they shot up his forehead. 

"They? Who are they? What has my daughter to do with a thing?"

"Oh, only that they say she went immediately after the magician went mad." Drawlight stopped and studied the doctor's reaction to his words, which was the angry red spot in his cheeks spreading further and further across face and nearly reaching his ears. "It seems to show that you were fearful of some harm coming to her."

"I suppose you got this from Mrs. Kendal-Blaire and so forth. They are nothing but a pack of fools."

"Oh, I dare say! But did you send your daughter away?"

Dr Greysteel had no response and was looking around him at the other patrons in the coffee house and shifting his weight slightly in his chair as if he was most uncomfortable, but he did not leave. Drawlight had done his job. The man was still here, with him. Drawlight drained his coffee with a smile. His heart was still going nervously in his chest, but he was doing well. 

"You, know, of course that he murdered his wife?" 

Drawlight had occasion to see Strange and his wife together only a handful of times and doubted that this was true, but it was what people were saying, so he said it too. It was essential that information of this sort spread as far as he could manage to spread it. 

"What?" Now Dr Greysteel paused. He let the information he had been given process, Drawlight watched the image of Strange almost perceptibly move across the doctor's eyes, and then he laughed a little. "I do not believe it."

"Oh, but you must believe it! It is what everybody knows! The lady's own brother, a most respectable man- a clergyman- a Mr Woodhope, was there when the lady died and saw with his own eyes." 

"What did he see?"

"All sorts of suspicious circumstances. The lady was bewitched."   
He went on describing the supposed account of the Reverend Woodhope, being careful to mention that Norrell was most anxious all the wrongs done to the poor woman be righted. Dr Greysteel began to shake his head most vigorously as Drawlight spoke, as if he would dodge the words getting into his ears at all. 

"Nothing that you say shall make me believe this slander. Strange is an honorable man!" 

Drawlight carefully confirmed this as he poured a bit more sugar in his tea, while asserting magic's power and how it had undone many. It was an easy transition back to Norrell from there and Drawlight let himself get quite elaborate in praise of the man. Let it get back to him, he thought, hopping from one superlative to another as quickly as he could think of them. He only stopped when he noticed how Dr Greysteel was staring at him. 

"It is a curious thing," he said. "You say that you are sent by Strange's friends, yet you have neglected to tell me who these friends are. It is certainly a very particular sort of man that voices it everywhere that a man is a murderer." 

Drawlight knew that he had been found out, but there was nothing for it but to see what happened next. He said nothing. 

"Was it Sir Walter Pole?" asked Dr Greysteel. 

"No." The truth was refreshingly easy to tell. Quite surprisingly, Drawlight began to relax. Why, it was almost like a game. "Not Sir Walter."

"Mr Strange's pupils then? I have forgotten their names." 

"Everybody always does. They are the most unmemorable men in the world."

"Was it them?"

"No." 

"Mr Norrell?" asked Dr Greysteel. 

Drawlight let his silence answer.

"What is your name?"

Drawlight thought for a moment to see if there was any way to avoid revealing himself, but answering was unavoidable and it seemed he was quite discovered at this point, so he could see no use in pretending otherwise. 

"Drawlight," he said. 

Dr Greysteel very nearly snarled 

"Oh ho, ho! Here's a pretty accuser. Yes indeed, your word will carry a great deal of weight against an honest man, against the Duke of Wellington's own magician. Christopher Drawlight, famed throughout England as a liar, thief, and scoundrel!"

Although these things were true, thought Drawlight, it was not as though the doctor was an honorable as he seemed, to sit there and call him names, a thing which he had quite enough of. Quite unbidden, he began to blush. 

"It suits you to say so! Strange is a rich man and you intend to marry your daughter to him. Where is the honor in that my dear doctor? Where is the honor in that?"

Dr Greysteel stood. He straightened himself and never took his eyes from Drawlight. 

"I will visit every English family in the Veneto. I shall warn them not to speak to you. I am going now. I wish you no good morning. I take no leave of you."

By now the other patrons were staring. The little dog in the corner had raised her head and was gazing at their table too. Drawlight would have been much more embarrassed had the doctor not left money on the table before storming out and if he hadn’t been quite sure, by the song of Italian whispers coming from behind hands, that no one in here spoke English but the two of them anyway. As it was, he waited several minutes, drinking quickly one of the glasses of brandy that had been brought with the coffee, and then carefully exited the shop. 

Once again, as he passed the canal, he woke the waves and they stretched themselves toward him.


End file.
